Jean Kellens, one of the foremost experts on Old Iranian literature for the last quarter of a century, is professor at the Collège de France, Paris. He began his Iranian studies with Professor Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin at Liège, Belgium, in the 1960s before...

This book offers a comparative study between a number of Talmudic and Middle Persian narratives. The present work seeks first and foremost to examine Talmudic narratives in their Iranian context, and secondly to examine the Talmudic background of Iranian...

This study highlights the patterns of complex parameters in the Gāthās, defining their pervasive numerology. Fundamentally, conceptual pairings and distributional patterns of terms suggest that the composer of the Gāthās presented, and...

Ancient Greek and Roman historians ventured very few absolute dates in recounting events of great age. And yet several of them —Xanthus, Pliny, Eudoxus, Plutarch—individually and specifically gave dates ranging from 6500 to 6200 BC for the time of Zarathustra...

This book is concerned with the doctrinal beliefs of the practising Zoroastrians examined within the frames of the Gothic principals. Variances in the current practice are considered. The doctrinal changes are explained in the light of socio-political forces...

Zoroastrianism is both an ancient and still practiced religion. At its height it was the state religion of the Sasanian empire (224 to 651 AD) that ruled in the land of Persia. Arab conquest of the area destroyed that empire and a multitude eventually...